Tag Archives: Spring 2016

To Carry C. D. Wright’s Work Forward, Shining

by Jill Magi These climacteric times: households drained and precarious, earth and creatures endangered, battlefields new and old, borders walled, the privatization of nearly everything, power and violence so well-groomed and stealth it covers its tracks quickly, fear as first response. There are large-scale losses and shifts looming. There is also the singular event of […]

Latest Volcano

Tana Jean Welch Marsh Hawk Press ($16) by Greg Bem In Latest Volcano, Tana Jean Welch reveals through poetry the gift and power of story. Each poem in this dense volume is lyrically defined by both narrative structure and holistic convergence of abstract and concrete. The presentation of characters, settings, and situations is as subtly […]

Liner Notes

James Brubaker Subito Press ($18) by Alex K. Hughes James Brubaker’s Liner Notes, a collection of thirteen stories, explores a fascination with music and pop culture. A jazz musician who has lost memory of his musical talents, a museum curator who habitually acquires the wrong historical items, and the renowned Brian Wilson make appearances. To […]

The Coyote’s Bicycle

Kimball Taylor Tin House Books ($26.95) by Emily Loberg In The Coyote’s Bicycle, the U.S.-Mexico border transforms into both a living creature with a pulsing magnetism and an imaginary architecture of the mind. It is a wall that grows and changes, as each American presidency adds to its fortifications and as migrants carve holes and […]

Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century

Daniel Oppenheimer Simon and Schuster ($28) by Mark Dunbar Although only David Oppenheimer’s first book, Exit Right conveys the work of an experienced hand. With a wealth of research and emotional obedience, Oppenheimer brilliantly traces the pre-conversion stories of six of 20th-century America’s most impactful political creatures: Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher […]

Vox Populi

Virginia Konchan Finishing Line Press ($14.49) by Larry Sawyer Virginia Konchan's chapbook Vox Populi is a long poem divided into sections, each a distinct celebration of a letter of the alphabet. From the moment the reader embarks upon this voyage with the letter A (“A is for amoeba, autocorrect of the leitmotif, / asset price […]

Surging toward Abjection: An Interview with Alan Sondheim

by Maria Damon and Murat Nemet-Nejat Alan Sondheim is a new media artist, musician, writer, and performer concerned with issues of virtuality and the stake that the real world has in the virtual. He has worked with his partner, Azure Carter, and the performer/ choreographer Foofwa d'Imobilité. Sondheim examines the grounds of the virtual and […]

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life

Jonathan Bate Harper ($40) by Katie Marquette Ted Hughes is arguably one of the most hated men in literary history. Following the death of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, and the subsequent success of her dark and disturbing Ariel poems, Hughes was accused of everything from wife beating to sadism to outright murder. Feminists proudly […]

Quiet Book

Pattie McCarthy Apogee Press ($15.95) by Jenny Drai In “genre scenes,” the third and final section of Pattie McCarthy’s new collection of poetry, the speaker tells us to “choose a moment & mark it.” What bookends this instruction is a consideration of individual moments of motherhood, moments that have shaped the parameters of history, language, […]